By Dan Skip Allen

I’ve followed the career of Anya Taylor Joy’s ever since I saw her in Robert Eggers “The Witch” in 2015. She was like a revelation to me. Ever since she’s played a younger version of Furiosa, in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”, a superhero in “New Mutants” and a woman at the mercy of a crazy chef in “The Menu”. She’s even played a chess prodigy in “Queens Gambit”. Her roles have shown me that she has the star quality. Her latest role in “Lucky” the AppleTV Original is another step in the right direction for her. She’s taking parts of a lot of her other roles, and she’s incorporated them into this one, and it’s a treat to see.

Episode one of “Lucky” starts with a framing device.  Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong is running between a bunch of  trucks at a truck stop. When she is eventually caught by a gun totting man. Then, the story flashes backward to where this story originated. There is an FBI Agent Billie Rand (Anjanue Ellis), and she is searching for “Lucky” because her attempted robbery of a casino goes wrong. From this moment on “Lucky” is on the run from the FBI, but that’s not all she’s on the run from. Some gangsters are also looking for her. They send a hitman named Dutch (Clifton Collins Jr.) after her. He works for her mother in law, Priscilla (Annette Bening). “Lucky” planned and tried to pull off the heist with her son Cary (Drew Starkey). He ended up missing after the attempted heist. This leaves “Lucky” to fend for herself and figure out what’s going on.

There are a few other cast members who play a key role in this series based on the best selling book from Marissa Stapley.Taylor-Joy’s character only had a single father, John Armstrong (Timothy Olyphant) and he taught her everything he knew about being a con artist. She picks up on his teachings quite fast, and before you know it, she wants to go on her own, but she falls in love with the son of a criminal and that complicates matters for her who is trying to find herself as a young adult. The man Cary is the son of gangster Whitaker (William Fichner), and he has a lot of money, but he has disowned his son. This causes him to have resentment towards his estranged father and his mother, who still works for this evil man. Add in another FBI Agent (Kershaw), and this only makes things more complicated. 

Taylor-Joy has done a lot of action films, and she has done fight choreography. In the first episode alone, the director put her through her paces. She gets into car crashes, jumps from heights, and runs for her life on more than one occasion. She is so believable in those kinds of scenarios. I was on the edge of my seat more than once during the six episodes that I watched of this mini-series. Even Ellis’s character had a few heartstrings moments fighting for her life. She ends up in the hospital for her luck. With a story that is depicted here, you have to have a lot of action scenes, fight sequences, and moments that will put the viewers in shock with how amazing they are. This show does that in spades. A flair going off inside a car was absolutely crazy. It’s hard to describe how wild it was.

A lot of television/streaming series or films have an item or some kind of thing that ties the story and characters together. Roger Ebert coined the word macguffin, which represents this. Here, the macguffin was the stolen money and a subsequent digital key phrase that kept the narrative moving forward from beginning to end. This was a good thing for the most part, but sick of writers using macguffins as a crutch to help tell stories. I know this show was based on the best-selling novel, so I understand why the writers used the macguffin in this way. Money has been used in this fashion way too many times. If I didn’t care about the characters, this would have been a deal breaker,  but because the characters were interesting and kept me engaged in them, I didn’t mind the obvious macguffin I’ve seen so many times before.

I’ve been saying for years that there are so many stories out there to be told and turned into books and then movies or television/streaming series like “Lucky”. I want more stories like this that give actresses an opportunity to shine. It’s not the same cookie-cutter kind of material, but something original. I liked the narrative structure of the show. The creators got it from the writer of the book, Marissa Stapley. She brought a tired action genre and breathed some new life into it. The framing device in episode one and the twists and turns throughout were because of the writing. The screenwriters brought the story to life in an incredible way. That’s what Hollywood needs writers to bring these kinds of stories to life on the big and small screens. 

“Lucky” is a prime example of when you have a good story with plenty of twists and turns and an engaging main character, you can achieve some great things. Taylor-Joy does a lot of action scenes, fight sequences, and dramatic acting, which all come together to show she is a genuine star in this business. She can literally do anything she wants. Her chemistry with Olyphant was terrific as well. They truly felt like father and daughter. I’m so excited for her to see what she has next for viewers. Even though there have been series similar to and feel to this, it was the supporting cast and Taylor-Joy that kept me interested in the journey of where this was going to go. AppleTV has another hit on their hands. I don’t know how they keep finding all of these great stories, but I’m here for them.

All episodes of Lucky can be streamed on AppleTV 6/6 episodes review’d

 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 stars